Exciting New WeatherBug Product

I'm excited to announce the launch of a new product from WeatherBug, WeatherBug Alert. Whether you want one-click access to live conditions and the forecast for your neighborhood, or severe weather alerts delivered to your desktop, WeatherBug Alert is right for you. For those of you concerned about downloading big desktop apps, or using a lot of memory, WeatherBug Alert is less than 400KB in size, and uses less than 5MB of RAM when running.

And if you're happening across this blog outside the U.S., never fear, WeatherBug Alert works everywhere!

Click here to download it and let me know what you think!

Rain + Mud = No Biking

After great expectations of coming up to visit Pittsburgh and go mountain biking with my college roommate, rain has chosen to "dampen" our spirits a little bit. It definitely stinks and maybe if the rain moves on we'll get a chance to get outside, but for now we're laying low, relaxing and waiting for the NFL draft to start.


The is about as close as I may come to a bike this weekend... So sad.

Reunion

Last night I was fortunate enough to meet up with a friend I met last summer at Gnomedex in Seattle, along with his friend who were visiting the States from South Africa. After a day of sight seeing, I picked the two of them up from the metro and met MIOL at Mai Thai down at the end of King St. in Old Town Alexandria.

Below is a picture of Colin enjoying his Tiger drink

And Carly enjoying her drink...

And MIOL and I at dinner...

After dinner, I wanted to show our friends what says America over and over again... frozen custard! I took them back to Del Ray and over to the Dairy Godmother. It's not surprising to say that they were both REALLY impressed and in love with custard once we were finished.

Me explaining what I like on my custard

Yep, that's a Rice Crispy sundae with marshmallow topping on chocolate custard.

At the end of the evening we were sad to drop our friends off at their hotel, but motivated to try and pull it together to make a trip down to see them. It's always interesting to hear a different perspective on things, and how our politics, pop culture, and technology is perceived outside the US. MIOL just liked their accents I think... ;)

Red Rock Hiking

Today, My Inferno of Love (MIOL) and I decided to take advantage of the warm weather and check out one of the regional parks in Northern Virginia that we had not been to as of yet. So, after visiting the NOVA park web site, I settled on Red Rock Potomac Overlook Park out by Leesburg. The park definitely earned its name as it was full of red rocks throughout the hike.

Here's a shot of MIOL and I...

After about 20 minutes of hiking MIOL and I decided that the park should be named Muddy Banks as we ended up waddling through 3-4" deep mud. It was actually kind of fun, like walking on ice.

Here's a better shot of the bank that must have been under water last week with all of the rain, hence the massive amounts of mud. Safe to say that we had to wear flip flops into the outlet malls later...

Arrival time

After a bit of confusion on where we were supposed to go, we pulled up at the hotel at 9:50. If I had gone to the right place it would have been 9:30. So, I would say that we spent all told about 3 hours on the road for a 2 hour trip. Once we got passed Fredricksburg, we were able to fly for the final 45 miles. It was just that darn stretch between there and the beltway.

Anyway, thanks for following along this evening. Hope you had fun and have a great easter weekend.

Back on the road!

After a nice dinner at panera we're back on the road at 7:30. Hopefully it won't be long... Say maybe an hour and a half?  Two hours? You decide.

Dinner

To be fair we have stopped for dinner at potomac mills. A half hour on the road so far. Traffic was as expected but hopefully it will lighten up when we get going again. Stay tuned.

Late start

So we're heading down to Richmond for a family wedding and like a few thousand other geese, we'll be driving down 95. For those of you following along at home, we are leaving Arlington at 6.

Will it be 2, 3, or 4 hours to drive 120 miles on a holiday Friday... Good Friday at that!

Stay tuned as I Blog our progress.

The National Zoo

Yesterday Lauren and I took advantage of the nice spring day to check out the National Zoo here in DC. Here's a tip to anyone who wants to visit the zoo on a nice day: Get there early.

Lauren and I got there around 10 and were able to get a good look at most of the animals before the massive spring break crowds moved in.

Here we are enjoying our day...

The Price of a Trail Run

As I went on my trail run yesterday afternoon along the Potomac, I couldn't help but think about why I like trail running so much... I mean, it hurts my knees, I have a total of 5 scars on my body that are a direct result of running this trail, and I usually have to tell someone I'm running the trail beforehand in case I break my leg.

What I like about trail running is that for an hour and ten minutes, I am doing nothing but focusing on putting one foot in front of the other. I am not thinking about anything else, and if I do happen to lose my focus, I am reminded pretty sharply by slipping or in some cases, cutting myself.

How much is 1 hour of complete quiet, and complete focus worth in today's world of instant messengers, the BlackBerry, cell phones, and high definition television? In my mind, worth the bumps, bruises and scars I have accrued, though yesterday I got off cheap with nothing at all!

Poker Night

The quest to learn how to play Texas Hold'Em continues. After the game got off to a late start, I lasted a bit longer this time around than the first time. I can honestly say that I'm understanding the game a bit better though I still have a lot to learn about what the potential draws could be based on what's on the table. I'm getting there... but for only second time, I don't think it was too bad.

Prior to the game, some of the guys entertained themselves with the host's Wii as seen below. You may not be able to tell it, but they are playing the new Tiger Woods golf.

We'll see if we can rally up enough people to play again in two weeks and see how I progress...

Georgetown

Nothing made me happier yesterday than seeing Georgetown roar back from 10 points down to beat UNC in overtime of the East regional final. North Carolina missed 21 of their final 23 shots as Georgetown ran away with the game once they sent the game to OT on Wallace's three.

My favorite sound of the entire game... "clunk." To hear it 21 times over the final 10 minutes and well into overtime, including two free throws, was music to my ears.

I'm definitely looking forward to seeing the big man match up next weekend between Oden of OSU and Hibbert on Georgetown, though I hope we can make it through this week of sure-to-be-expected hype.

One final note... for a conference that sent 7 teams the NCAAs this year, should we be a little upset that not a single team from the ACC made the final four? Should we be wondering if perhaps a few of those at-large bids was given to one of the unsung mid-majors?

Just some food for thought...

Tuxedo Day

My friend Jeff is getting married this August and today was the day we were going to pick out a few options for the groomsmen.

Here are a few of the options we looked at. I personally was a fan of the black shirt with the silver vest since we are going with silver as the color of the vests. I'm not sure if that color will look good on everyone, so it comes down to being Jeff's fiance's call.

I really liked this look, but again... not sure if it would look as good on us.

Here are some random shots of Jeff's brother-in-law, Ahmed, and myself assisting Jeff with the process.

I was pretty surprised at home many options there are for tuxedos, with the different style of jackets, vest or cummerbund (does anyone where these anymore?), pattern for the vest, color, black or white shirt, round or square shoes, etc. If you really wanted to turn your wedding into a box of crayons, I suppose you could...

Big Ten and ACC

I didn't have high expectations for the Big Ten. Other than Wisconsin and Ohio State, all of the other teams were seeded lower than 6. So the fact that only Ohio State has advanced is not surprising. The ACC, however, which had been talked up all season, with it sending 7 teams, only has one team advancing to the sweet 16, UNC. All of the high hopes for Maryland, Virginia Tech, and UVA were squashed when all three teams lost in the final minutes of their games to lower seeds.

The big surprise to me is the Pac-10. If USC holds on to beat Texas, three teams will have moved on to the final 16. I'm impressed.

New York and the NCAA Tournament

It seems that the time to blog comes and goes like the tide (and more practically, like the warm weather around here). While the time was easy to come by over the winter holidays, sitting down for a few minutes on the computer when it is not related to work, is very rare. Time has been so limited lately that trying to pull together my brackets for the NCAA tournament and my player list for the NCAA fantasy draft was tough... and those of you who know me really well, I always make the time for the NCAA tournament.

So what has happened around here? For Valentine's Day, I gave Lauren a ticket to The Lion King on Broadway and a hotel room in the theatre district. So, we left Friday afternoon and drove up 95 with all of the other thousands that had the same idea. Needless to say, a 4.5 hour drive took over 6 hours. To say I was frustrated would be an understatement. I feel the same frustration sitting in traffic that I do when sitting on a runway waiting to take off. Helpless.

Anyway, the show was great, and we were lucky to catch the city on a nice weekend in March. The weather was in the upper 50's and sunny which in retrospect is pretty darn lucky considering the weather that moved up the East Coast this weekend. While up there, we also had a chance to catch up with some friends who have a place on the Upper West Side and get a nice tour. Of course, while we were up there, we lost an hour of sleep due to the earlier implementation of Daylight Savings Time (which I think I still have not recovered from). Fortunately, the ride home was much less eventful as we left the city at 2:45 and made it home by 7.

On the note of Daylight Savings Time, I'm still puzzled as to why there was such a mad scramble to implement the DST patch across the country. The law was passed in August of 2005 yet Microsoft was releasing the final patches for Outlook a week before the change in time. Do you remember the paranoia around Y2K that ended up amounting to nothing? I want to know how much productivity was affected by this DST change. I know personally, my BlackBerry did not changeover when it was supposed to, and when I manually changed it, all of my meetings and meeting requests sent from the BlackBerry were an hour off. It took me to manually download the patch from my BlackBerry to get it right. And my brother brings up a good point... what is going to happen when the old DST date comes and goes? How will we fare?

On to my favorite weekend of the year, the opening weekend of the NCAA tournament. Over the past four years, I've either been in Vegas or off from work to fully enjoy all four days of the opening two rounds. This year, I did what supposedly every other college basketball fan does, check the scores throughout the day and leave the office as close to 5 as possible. That being said, there was an interesting article on Slate.com that talks about the myth of lost productivity due to the NCAA tournament. Some consulting company claimed that over $3.8B worth of productivity is lost each year due to workers checking scores or following games online. Speaking as someone who does keep an eye on the games, it is no more distracting to keep an eye on a score as it is to have people come up to you all day long to BS or ask you questions. In fact, I felt like I was able to get more done because I had my headphones on and people would not bother coming up to talk to me.

Anyway, the first two days of the tournament pretty much held to "chalk" as they say with most of the bigger teams winning as they were supposed to. The only "surprise" (in quotes because I picked it), was VCU beating Duke. The second round has been exciting, but again, not too many surprises unless you count Maryland losing to Butler as a surprise. The Terps looked sloppy yet again and consequently lost in the 2nd round. However, currently my Hoyas (I say my because I have always liked them, no matter what anyone else says) are struggling with a pretty good BC team.

I would like nothing more for the ACC teams to all get knocked out and the Big Ten to rack up as many wins as they can since it was downplayed as a weaker conference this year. I guess we'll see just how weak it was during the UNC-MSU game tonight.

More later...

Some Arkansas Pictures

Below are a few of the 100 pictures I took over the weekend documenting all of the memories that were made. Look for the full set on my Flickr site soon!

The First Delay

So far, a storm in Minneapolis has delayed our departure from little rock. What will happen in Memphis?

Tearful Goodbye

Well the time has come for us to say goodbye to our family and hope that we can see each other sooner than the last time we separated. As we left the Tanner's house the overwhelming message was that I was lucky to have found Lauren (which I already knew) and that they wanted to be kept abreast of any developments (which I will). I was happy to see everyone welcome her as much as they welcomed me. If I have come away with anything from this trip, it is that no matter how much time passes, and how much distance separates you, your family is your family and they will welcome you and love you no matter what.

So, as Hot Springs Village fades away in the background I promise you all that we will do a better job staying in touch and make an effort to get together with everyone again soon. And to my grandmother, I wish you a happy 95th birthday and hope that I was lucky enough to inherit your genes. If I am even half as sharp and active as you are, and live the life that you have led, I will be truly blessed.

Now, if we can just get back to DC with the frozen mix affecting the area as I type this. If not, I might have some time in Memphis to upload some photos on a high speed connection. We shall see...

Party Success!

Grandma's party at her home, at lakeshore, was quite the success! All of grandma's friends at the home joined the Clark clan for cake and punch and my aunt gracie on the piano. The crowd was so heavy that my aunt Linda and I could barely keep up with the punch serving.

I think the biggest challenge of this weekend will be deciding what pictures to post of the hundred I have taken. I imagine most of them will sit in a folder for memories, but I am happy to have so many of my family. This has been a weekend to remember and for once, I am documenting it appropriately.

Tonight, the festivities include dinner, and some sort of game or games. The weather has also cooperated as well as the storms appear to have moved off and the sun is now out!

No Internet!

Sadly, with as remote as Hot Springs Village is from Little Rock there is hardly a signal for the Verizon air card, and none of the neighbors have a connection for us to tap into. So, that means no pictures until tomorrow.

On another note, the weather down here is ferocious with the entire area under a tornado watch until later this afternoon. The rain has been coming down in buckets since the wee hours of the night which made sleep difficult.

Last night was a lot of fun reuniting with family that I had not seen in 13 years and others where only 5 years has passed. It seems sad that it has been so long, but it was nice to see that despite the passing time, the feeling of family is still very strong. AND, at 95, my grandmother is still as sharp as a tack which should make her reception today that much more fun!